The Great plains

The Great Plains Region includes Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

At a glance: energy production, population change, habitat fragmentation

The Great Plains is a broad expanse of relatively flat grassland, bordered on the northwest by the Rocky Mountains. The region has a distinct north to south temperature gradient, resulting in disparate extreme weather events across the region. In the north, Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas have experienced record rainfalls and snowmelt since 2011, causing rivers to overflow, ultimately costing $2 billion in North Dakota alone. Conversely, the south has experienced severe droughts and heat waves, with Texas and Oklahoma facing sweltering temperatures with more than 100 days over 100ºF. These high temperatures further stress water resources in the south, endangering access to clean water for the rapidly growing urban populations in Texas and costing $10 billion in agricultural losses.

Demographic shifts in population size, diversity, and density are complex in the Great Plains, and interact with energy extraction industries to shape land use in the region. Northern populations have shrunk as a result of movement of younger generations from rural to urban areas in search of economic opportunities, leaving aging rural populations with few people of working age. On the other hand, the boom in oil and gas production with the advent of extensive hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” in the Eagle Ford, Barnett and Bakken shales has drawn young workers from across the country. Such rapid growth in a semiarid region that is becoming drier is not a good combination—some towns have had to truck water in from regional reservoirs and rivers.

The Great Plains are being altered by changes in demography, intensive energy extraction activities, and use of public lands for grazing and ranching. Man-made boundaries threaten to trap wildlife in islands of habitat, preventing them from migrating in concert with changing temperatures. For example, bison populations that have survived for thousands of years migrated in response to climate change in the past, but are now constrained by highways, buildings, and degraded habitat, forcing them to adapt in place to new environmental conditions. The biodiversity of this region provides an important source of economic opportunity for rural communities, particularly through tourism in Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks. For example, tourism contributed $773.3 million to Wyoming in 2014 alone.